How morality fits into the global picture.
November 27, 2007
Business executives have justified their actions with a "when in China, do as the Chinese do" defense. To do business in China, these executives insist, they must comply with local laws. But China's local laws often force executives to make moral and ethical choices that would be intolerable in the West.
Business executives have justified their actions with a "when in China, do as the Chinese do" defense. To do business in China, these executives insist, they must comply with local laws. But China's local laws often force executives to make moral and ethical choices that would be intolerable in the West.From Peter Navarro's op-ed in the LA Times. Peter's the author of The Coming China Wars.
The broader problem is that American business executives have little training in how to deal with ethics in a corrupt and totalitarian global business environment -- blame U.S. business schools for that. As a result, moral horizons tend to be short, and executives who find themselves in the heat of a battle don't know where to draw the line, which is what happened to Yahoo.